Around Maryland

When the USS Constellation began leaking 3,000 gallons of water an hour more than two years ago, Chris Rowsom knew repairs were needed — and urgently. As a stopgap measure before they could get the 19th century tall ship into dry dock for repairs, divers began making emergency patches about every six weeks. “Ideally, a wooden ship needs to get out of the water every five years for repairs,” explained Rowsom, executive director of Historic Ships in Baltimore. It’s taken seven years to raise the money for this drydock visit, which has just been completed at a cost of roughly $1 million. “Visitors keep the lights on and pay staff, but don’t pay for big-ticket items,” Rowsom said. State and city funding totaling nearly $2.8 million also will cover other major repairs to the sloop-of-war, which is considered a National Historic Landmark, at its berth in the Inner Harbor.

The executive director of the Maryland Film Festival said Monday that the organization “had no other choice” but to close the Parkway Theatre, less than six years after the historic venue was rehabilitated and reopened. “People may think we had other choices, but we really didn’t,” Sandra L. Gibson said. “This is the result of the enduring pandemic.” The Banner reported Saturday that the Parkway will scale back operations in early 2023 and pause its screenings and programs to find a new sustainable model for the film festival, which they hope will return for its 25th anniversary in 2024. Ten staff members — three full-time and seven part-time — have been laid off.

Comptroller-elect Brooke Lierman (D) is announcing Monday the first major appointments of her senior leadership team as she prepares to take office on Jan. 16. Lierman has tapped Rianna P. Matthews-Brown to be her chief of staff, and said that Andrew Schaufele, a mainstay in the comptroller’s office for 13 years, will serve as chief deputy comptroller. Matthews-Brown is a veteran government manager who has also worked in the private sector, spending seven years at Johns Hopkins University, most recently as deputy chief of staff to President Ronald Daniels. She has also been director of university initiatives for Daniels and has also been part of the university’s government affairs team.

Carroll County Public Schools must submit a plan to the state in March for how the county will implement the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future education reforms, and discussions have begun on what that plan should contain. The 10-year, $3.8 billion plan has ambitious goals to help Maryland schools bridge achievement gaps among students of all backgrounds and produce graduates capable of competing globally. Among the 179-page plan’s many objectives is expanding and funding prekindergarten for all 4-year-olds and low-income 3-year-olds.

A controversy is now roiling a part of the Hampden neighborhood. A developer wants to level a secluded 1930 industrial property and replace it with a six-story apartment house, complete with parking and a swimming pool. Added to the drama is a stout brick chimney that once served the old clothing factory’s boiler. It’s a tall smokestack where thousands of migrating chimney swifts swoop and spend the night in the late summer and again in the spring. Come morning, they take off. The show the birds make is enough to draw dozens of human onlookers to take in this semiannual ornithological show. This smokestack has achieved a real following. The building, at 3110 Elm Ave., is known as the Free State Bookbinders, a business that started operating here in 1984 but shut down about a year ago.

The Parkway Theatre will go dark in early 2023, discontinuing screenings and other events in the renovated movie palace that is home to the Maryland Film Festival and which, according to financial documents obtained by The Sun, has been operating in the red. Struck hard like other arts organizations and businesses by the COVID pandemic, film festival officials said they are hitting the pause button to develop a new business plan and adjust to the current economic climate and “dramatic and continuing shifts” in the movie business and audiences.